Huletts Landing, Lake George.
Clear water laps at the docks as I wait for Tom Conrad, owner of Huletts Landing Marina. The trees are bare and there are pockets of snow in certain shadowy corners, but it’s sunny and unseasonably warm for April in the Adirondacks. Save a lone fishing boat that drifts by with its motor off, the lake is empty. From the edge of the dock, I can see straight to the sandy bottom. As Conrad drives around the lake, he describes a spring night he spent watching smelt run under a full moon in his early 20s. He was so taken that he moved to Huletts Landing full time. We stop to watch a dark cloud of the tiny fish running through a stream near his house, where he lives with his young family.
He points to the other side of the marina, which faces the bay. It’s murkier on this side and while I don’t dip my feet into the freezing water, the bottom looks squishy, even slimy. “By the fall this will all be grown in,” Conrad says, gesturing to his corner of the bay.
During the summer, milfoil grows about an inch a day, pulling nutrients from the soil at the lake’s bottom as it moves toward the surface.
The spring thaw also brings warmer waters, which happen to be the preferred habitat of an invasive aquatic species that’s sparked a vigorous debate on Lake George. It’s pitted lake protection
